Drake has been the spirited quarterback of popular music for quite some time. While his contemporary Kendrick Lamar carves poetic justice into America’s poplar trees, and his elder statesman Kanye West adds volume to his endless cultural domain, Drake’s prolific production has permanently altered the sound of the time.
His antepenultimate project Nothing Was The Same made him equal parts international superstar and introspective night owl. In the two years since, Drake has released two LPs posing as mixtapes, squashed an underprepared, unqualified rapper like a bug in a beef that he started, and piled up a list of genreless features so high Dwight Howard couldn’t reach.
As Leon Neyfakh brilliantly observed in his sterling profile of Drake for Fader last month, the lane which the Canadian crooner/rapper/consummate performer has entered — and been in for years — is alongside Taylor Swift, Beyonce and Rihanna. That isn’t to say he’s “too good for rap,” but Drake’s mission as a songwriter has transcended genre. With each project, Drake is shortening the distance between himself and his audience. He’d say his music has become a two-way conversation.
“I know everything,” he told Neyfakh. “I know everything that’s being said about (the listener). I know everything that’s being said about me. I’m very in tune with this life. Much like, I assume, most of my listeners are.”
“Hotline Bling” music video from Apple Music.
Drake knew Twitter would blow up in finger-pointing ridicule when he released the video for “Hotline Bling” on Monday. The colorful mise en scene and the occasional big-bodied female dancer are the lone distractions in the frame. The video is otherwise just Drake dancing.
The art behind the video is more than accessible — Drake is simulating the guilt of being alone with your desires. (“Hotline Bling” begins and ends with vivacious female employees at a sex hotline taking phone calls.) As the song builds behind every replay of the hook and “Ever Since I Left The City You…,” Drake wanders the futuristic color palette chosen by Toronto’s own Director X and croons on and on about lovers past. The song is not sad — it sounds like the early morning hours off any summer night — but Drake stuffs it to the brim with his patented self-reflexive lyrics.
One of Drake’s corner in our pop culture — Neyfakh counted three, and there might be more — is bringing phrases to life that instantaneously land as the thing we mutter to ourselves when we’re driving in the car or taking a piss break at work. This is where Drake is coming from when he says he knows everything about his audience. In his lyrics, he captures the just right way to describe every little emotion, and all day long we regurgitate it: to ourselves, to our friends, and when we go out.
Hotline Bling Video out now. https://t.co/qgc76Se66y @AppleMusic pic.twitter.com/ZrI6HKN1tL
— Drizzy (@Drake) October 20, 2015
The overnight legacy of “Hotline Bling,” undoubtedly, is the dancing — which falls somewhere between Bachata and I Need To Pee, Where’s The Bathroom.
Drake’s deft ability to navigate his own venerability, to bring something into the world that will surely embarrass himself — nobody takes a joke as well as Drake does — is damn near awe-inspiring. His consciousness as an artist is what allows him to create something so closely in line with how his fans experience him.
The Internet turned @Drake into one of the best dancers of the 21st century: https://t.co/Tts9jDHbir https://t.co/uNxpfUW57q
— Complex (@Complex) October 20, 2015
Let’s be honest: When new Drake comes out, we all do what he’s doing in the “Hotline Bling” video. We’re shaking our rumps, pumping our fists and thinking we’re the hottest person in the room. Drake knows this — he told us so. It’s why he drives himself again, according to Neyfakh, so that he can hear what he sounds like in the setting where so many people listen to his music.
Obsessing over each syllable, each syncopation, and all the way down the list to details like, “Do I get hype when I listen to this in the car?” is what has made Drake (North) America’s biggest pop star. We know when that new Drake drops, it can only mean one thing.
